


Where To Go After The War

by Merfilly



Category: Aliens (1986), Terminator
Genre: Clones, Comfort Sex, Community: ladyslash, F/F, Femslash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-05
Updated: 2010-05-05
Packaged: 2017-10-15 05:40:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/157582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/pseuds/Merfilly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ellen, meet Sarah. Enjoy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where To Go After The War

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nomelon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nomelon/gifts).



The two women had met in a bar. Neither one, given the lives they had lived, were all that surprised to find out they shared so much.

The spacer, who had only ever wanted to be a flight officer, make her fortune, and be home in time for her daughter's birthday, had lived at least three lifetimes already. She thought her time was over and done with a plunge into molten metal, the war ended. Then they made her over again, turned her into a monster, used her to make more. She was certain that it was only a matter of time before Hell reopened, and her nightmares spilled out again.

Her drinking companion, earthbound and still struggling with her recreation as someone's pet science project, was harder in some ways. Her role had never been destroyer, not first and foremost in her mind. No, she was the protector, the guardian. It had been for her son to destroy, to win. She had only held that in trust. When her death had come, she had known it would serve him, harden and anneal him into more of a warrior, and give him a saint to use for iconography among his troops.

"The Machines wound up losing, just so humanity could fuck itself over harder for a cut of the profit?" the second of the pair said slowly, wrapping her head around the concept that yes, her son had been the big damn savior that her one night stand had proclaimed him to be.

"Pretty much, yeah. Burke might have been the biggest asshole to ever teach me that lesson, but Perez came close." The spacer drank the rest of her home-brew, before looking over the rim of the bottle at the recently freed science experiment. "All the memories?"

"Yeah."

"Not even enough to live once." She set the bottle down, and then slapped down a few wafers of stim-sense, a drug she had no use for but which worked fine for credit in dives like this. "Come on, Connor, and see what's come out of your son's rebellion."

Sarah eyed the sarcastic, sharp-bitten woman a long time, before finally deciding to let it slide...for now. Ripley, at least, didn't treat her like a lunatic.

`~`~`~`~`

"Still just fucking sheep, waiting for the next big thing to come fuck them over into the ground."

Connor's words made Ripley laugh bitterly. "I figure those damn xenomorphs will make it here, and next fucking time, I just take a ship and go get lost in space," she said. "Then I wonder how much of that is the fucking gene-splicing that made me."

"How do I know I'm fully human?"

Connor and Ripley matched eyes, and the spacer's nostrils flared wide. Her senses were enhanced, much as her strength and endurance. When she didn't smell anything but smoke, alcohol, and human sweat, she gave a shrug. "You don't. But from where I stand, I think you're as human as anyone else." She looked down on the sprawling metropolitan chaos beneath them from their perch on top of Ripley's latest bolt hole. "Maybe more than the ones that made you."

That wasn't much comfort, for either of them.

`~`~`~`~`

Neither one knew how to handle alone, even after all this time. Added to that was the waiting, the interminable waiting for the Hell they both knew had to be out there. After all, they were marked by Fate.

Nothing set in stone was too long forgotten for Connor, even on the nights she got tired of scouting the city, stealing what she needed to make an arsenal all over again. Ripley couldn't even say her first name anymore, let alone the name of the woman she shared her space with. They taught each other survival, they shared battle stories of a kind, and they knew each other inside and out, just by the sharing of horror.

When the Nightmares came, that knowing was enough. It was enough to awaken older, deeper responses to living on the thin edge of adrenaline, even if it had no reason to exist. Lips found their mirrored set, sealing off the screams, the cries of denial. Rough, battle ravaged fingers rucked up coarse cloth, baring skin beneath. Feverish, grasping hands made bruising marks on the pale skin of breasts that had never known the touch of an infant, yet ached in both ways for what they had lost. Sharp, even teeth strayed along bone, making the flesh raise in remembered fear, pushing it aside for the need of the moment.

A tangle of limbs, with skin made slick by sweat, led to the women grinding tight against one another. Fingers slipped past that tangle of flesh, parting damp curls, as their mouths came together to cut off any noise that might have betrayed their need. Both power and strength dominated the touching, the thrusts of searching fingers, until a breathless union of pleasure carried them past the fear, past the memories, and into the quiet of the now.

It wouldn't last, but at least they knew each other well enough to know they had this.

`~`~`~`~`

"I say we hijack a ship anyway," Sarah said on the hundredth day of freedom.

Ellen just smiled.


End file.
